Page 72 of Charged By the Razorbacks

She’d thought—more than once—that dying might be easier.

And then—Tamsin came in. The door breaking open. The fight. The moment everything changed. Naomi exhaled slowly, her body sinking back into the bed, the present pulling her away from the past just enough to breathe.

She was here. She was safe.

She had a chance at—

Something flickered within her. Her brow furrowed slightly, her fingers twitching against the sheets. The nausea spiked again. Stronger this time.

Her vision blurred at the edges, the light overhead suddenly too bright, too harsh as a low ringing started somewhere deep in her ears.

“Okay,” she whispered to herself, her voice unsteady. “Okay, that’s—”

Her hand lifted, but it didn’t quite obey her. A tremor ran through it. Then another. Her breath hitched. Something wasn’t right.

The ringing grew louder. Her pulse stuttered.

Her muscles tightened without her telling them to.

“What—” she tried, the words barely forming.

The first spasm hit hard. Her back arched slightly, her body locking as the signal misfired, her vision fracturing into sharp bursts of white and black.

Her fingers clenched. Her jaw tightened. The world tilted.

Then—everything went dark.

****

He had never dropped to his knees for anything in his life.

Not for a man. Not for a fight. Not for anything that demanded submission or surrender.

And then her scent had reached him through the sterile hospital air, and something ancient and unrelenting had torn straight through him, dragging him down without warning.

Mate.

The word hadn’t been spoken, but it had settled just the same, deep and immovable, locking into place before his mind had even caught up.

Now he stood outside her door, arms folded loosely across his chest, his body still and controlled in a way that didn’t match the storm running beneath his skin. Malik stood beside him, just as silent, just as contained, but Jamal could feel it in him too—the same awareness, the same instinct to break through the door and claim what had already been marked as theirs.

“She’s quiet,” Malik said, his voice low enough that it barely carried beyond the space between them.

Jamal didn’t take his eyes off the door. “She’s resting now that the nurses have left.”

His jaw tightened as he forced himself to stay exactly where he was instead of acting on the instinct that told him to move, to check, to make sure she was still breathing.

“What if she hates us?” Malik said quietly, the words slipping out like he’d been holding them back for too long.

Jamal’s gaze flicked to him then, sharp, assessing. “Then we don’t give her a reason to.”

Malik huffed a breath that didn’t carry any humor. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

Jamal looked back at the door. He knew exactly what he meant.

What if she looked at them and saw monsters? What if the size of them, the power of them, the reality of what they were pushed her further away instead of drawing her in?

What if she was afraid?